


Top-Shelf Sounds

by Ginger_Cat



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blow Jobs, Dangerous Situations, First Kiss, Freeform, Frotting, M/M, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sherlock is a man of many talents, Virgin Sherlock, but still mostly porn, ok maybe a little plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:03:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginger_Cat/pseuds/Ginger_Cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of PWP one-offs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Top-Shelf Sounds

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will be a repository for the occasional pesky smut scene that doesn't really have a place in a longer story... so please forgive me for not having any plot or semblance of a story arc in any of these. They're just good ol', shameless porn. ;)

                Sherlock always knew it would happen like this.

                It was because he’d been thinking about it for so long that he felt like it had really, already happened. The way John’s lips felt on his now wasn’t a new feeling at all, even though he’d never actually felt them before. It was an old feeling, ages old, but maybe a little sharper this time. And maybe John’s breath smelled a bit differently than in his imagination, maybe a little like stale coffee and whatever leftover curry he’d eaten for lunch. But it was still the same, the same motion of lips, the same hand on his cheek and in his hair, the same height difference, the same hot exhale of breath on his face, the same smoothness of their noses sliding over one another’s as they turn their heads in opposite directions. Same body heat. Same erection.

                If John only _knew_ how many times Sherlock had got hard at the thought of this happening. How many times he’d brought himself to climax thinking about it, just the kissing. Oh, he’d thought about other things too, of course he had, but the kissing alone could do it for him. And even simpler things could do it for him, on his really horny days—for instance, John being in the shower. Sherlock couldn’t count the number of times he’d been in his bedroom and heard John get into the shower and had masturbated, quietly as he could, laying back on his bed, thinking about John’s body under the hot running water.

                Then there were the days, the really lucky days, when John would get that fidgety look in his eye and swallow a lot and scratch the back of his head before claiming that he was going to “turn in early,” which was the lie he told Sherlock when he was going to his room to watch porn. Sherlock would wait the perfect amount of time for John to get settled into his wank before flinging off to the side whatever book or laptop or newspaper was in his hand and bounding up the stairs to put his ear to John’s door and listen to the soft sounds of self-pleasure. Usually Sherlock was too careful to take out his own cock and bring himself off outside the door, usually he would just stand there getting achingly hard and committing every sound to memory before tip-toeing back down the stairs and into his own bedroom to relieve his arousal. He kept those sounds cataloged and stored in his mind palace, he had a whole room devoted.

                But sometimes he would rub himself through the fabric of his trousers with one hand and brace his other hand on the doorframe, shoving his face into his own shoulder to muffle any sort of sound he might make as he came. And then, just as in the usual instance, he would tip-toe down the stairs, except this time go for a change of clothes.

                But. Back to the kissing. Back to this moment, the moment that felt like a memory but was really brand new. Sherlock slid his hands round the small of John’s back, as he had done so many times in his dreams, and John tightened the grip he held in Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock used his tongue, tentatively exploring John’s own, and John made a little whimpering sound in the back of his throat. That was good. That was very good. That was up on the top shelf of John Watson arousal sounds, the ones that John only brought down when he was _really_ into it. Sherlock pulled John’s hips closer to his, not exactly pressing them together, but letting them touch, and he could feel John’s erection growing. He smiled as he moved to kiss down John’s jaw line and into the crook of his neck. John’s breath was loud and ragged in his ear, magnified a thousand times. “Sherlock,” he whispered, and Sherlock felt a shiver down his spine at the sound of his name.

                “Mmmm,” Sherlock acknowledged, sucking lightly on John’s earlobe as he drew John’s hips closer in. Pressing, now. Their pricks pressed against each other’s, and Sherlock felt John’s body melt into the curves of his own. John let out another top-shelf sound, and Sherlock lifted his head back round to kiss his lips again. They were looser than before, the lips, especially the bottom one, which Sherlock promptly licked before slipping it in between his two.

                John’s other hand, which had formerly been resting on Sherlock’s bicep, suddenly shot up to clutch the back of Sherlock’s neck. The kissing became more desperate then. Passionate, Sherlock supposed, was a better word for it.  John kissed him with passion, with hunger, with whatever he’d built up inside himself and had, up to this point, resisted letting go of. He pulled away and stared up into Sherlock’s eyes, and caught his breath long enough to say, “God, I want you.”

                Words that Sherlock had been waiting to hear. Words he knew John would utter, because Sherlock always knew it would happen like this.


	2. Rock and Roll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First of all, that song was made for sex.

                John really doesn’t know how this happened. It had seemed innocent at first, incredibly innocent, it was supposed to be just a little, relaxing break from the baby and Mary. He was supposed to come over to help with some case or another, but somehow the topic got shifted all the way over to music, and all John could remember was that they’d had a couple drinks each and John had said something like, “Nah, you couldn’t possibly like rock and roll,” and Sherlock had said something like, “How would you know?” and John had retorted with “Well, because no one who’s got a stick that far up their arse could possible enjoy it.” Then Sherlock had looked quite affronted and mischievous at the same time, which was a very dangerous combination, and said something which sounded like a shot at John’s observation skills (John couldn’t exactly remember the wording) and John had said back, “Okay, Sherlock, prove me wrong then.”

                At that, Sherlock had raised his eyebrows and leaned forward and said, low and rumbly, “I will, but I have to be high first.”

                Well, John wasn’t about to give up at that point, because he was still pretty sure, like seventy five percent, that Sherlock was bluffing, so he stumbled down to Mrs. Hudson’s to get ahold of some of her herbal soothers. And when he returned Sherlock said, “Only if you do.” So they lit up and took a couple hits each, and then, to John’s shock and wonderment, Sherlock disappeared to his bedroom and reappeared with an electric guitar.

                It wasn’t exactly what John had had in mind. Not exactly remotely at all. He’d expected the proof, if there was any, to come from a recitation of some Led Zeppelin lyrics and maybe even a riff or two on the violin. He did not expect a guitar, nor Sherlock to plug it into an amp, tune it with a pick between his teeth, and ask for another hit while he strummed out a few warm-up chords. John, bewildered and obedient as always, leaned forward and put the blunt between Sherlock’s plump, pale lips. Sherlock sucked in, with his eyes closed, and played the opening bars of “Hotel California.”

                First of all, that song was made for sex. John had never quite understood the lyrics but as Sherlock played and he sang along in his head, they were hot, somehow. And the riffs were slow and hot too, and then the solo, _God_. Funny thing was he’d never even realized it was hot until Sherlock played it, perched on the edge of John’s chair, with his curls hung over the neck of the instrument and his elegant fingers drifting across the strings, pressing, sliding, bending, wavering. During the solo the detective bit down on one corner of his bottom lip and closed his eyes and yes, okay, John was zero percent right about anything. There was no bluff. Sherlock clearly liked rock and roll, maybe even worshiped it, because there was no way he could play like that if he didn’t.

                After he was finished Sherlock had looked up from the guitar at John on the couch, his pale eyes sparkling. He had to know what he’d just done because of the way he was staring and the way he set the guitar on the floor, and stood up, and waited for John to come to him while the remaining resonance of the strings hummed atonally in the background. He didn’t have to wait long. John was already standing and in front of him and was thinking maybe he actually stood up first, and that was why Sherlock had stood too, and then he was pulling Sherlock into a heavy, sloppy, desperate kiss.

                So now John is kissing him and wondering how they got there. He can probably blame drugs and rock and roll, because those two are part of a trio and the third part is inevitable if the first two are present. He’s kissing him and kissing him, and devouring him, and Sherlock is fumbling at his shirt buttons, and John is lacing his fingers through Sherlock’s hair. “God, oh God,” John says, and it’s more like a prayer than anything, because he’s totally completely out of his element and needs some higher power to take control. As it turns out that higher power is not God, it’s Sherlock Holmes, and that turns out to be perfectly okay with John. Sherlock pivots him around and walks him backwards and pushes his body against the wall, kissing down to his neck. John’s hands are still clutching Sherlock’s hair and his head is thrown back and his hips are bowed away from the wall, trying to find Sherlock’s own. He needs some friction, and those fingers, the ones that played the hell out of that guitar. John sees Sherlock’s left hand against the wall beside his head and he leans and kisses the wrist.

                Sherlock immediately moves his mouth up to John’s ear, kisses and licks right below it as he shifts his thumb over and between John’s lips. John swallows it in and tastes it. It tastes like dirty metal, like he supposes the guitar strings would taste. Sherlock lets out a whimper, a small one, but it sounds like John’s name, he breathes it right into John’s ear. John bites down and Sherlock actually _moans_.

 _Fuck. Holy fucking fuck._ John doesn’t know what’s happening but those noises can’t possibly sound this good. It has to be the weed, or the alcohol, or the combination, that’s making those noises vibrate his entire body with want. John lets go of Sherlock’s hair and pushes him toward the kitchen table, and with a _bang_ and a _crash_ Sherlock is laying on his back with the empty glass beakers shattered on the floor around him. Sherlock is between John’s legs and John is literally ripping his shirt open and feeling his way around the man’s chest and stomach with his hands and his mouth. He makes it down to his trousers and unbuckles the belt.

                “Please,” Sherlock pleads. “Do it like you did my thumb. Please.”

                John pulls down Sherlock’s trousers and pants and puts his mouth around Sherlock’s erection without a second thought. More sounds come out, more lovely sounds, and John thinks he’ll do anything to hear those sounds forever, even if that anything amounts to him sucking on the other man’s cock. After a few moments, not long at all, Sherlock suddenly grasps the back of John’s head with his strong, spindly fingers and pulls it off his prick, then sits up and literally falls into him on the wall again. Sherlock’s pants are around his ankles and his shirt is flapping open and he’s grinding his bare crotch into a wet spot against the front of John’s trousers. “John, John, please.” There it is, another beg, and John’s hands fly up to pull the detective into him by the waist. “What do you want,” John murmurs, except it comes out like a growl, and he’s startled because it doesn’t even sound like his own voice.

                “You know, you know,” Sherlock answers, desperately.

                John’s never seen Sherlock so needy before, it’s so unlike him to defer, but it seems he wants John to lead, and John is okay with that. Sherlock has always had the upper hand and now John gets to command _him_ for once. “On the bed,” John growls, and when Sherlock’s knees buckle but he doesn’t move, John shoves him off and demands it. “Do it, now.”

                Sherlock nearly trips as he stumbles toward the bedroom and John follows, taking in the sight of his bare arse in the lamplight. John rubs a palm on his own crotch as Sherlock lies down on the bed, all willing and pliant and fucking wonton, and John feels a surge of power and desire that makes him light headed. “Turn over,” he orders, and Sherlock does it. John walks up to him and puts his hands on Sherlock’s smooth, bare arse, and massages the cheeks away from each other so that he can see the pink pucker of his opening.

                “Drawer,” Sherlock gasps, and points to the bedside table.

                John goes to it and finds the lube and some condoms. He manages not to think about how or why or what those items are doing in there or how Sherlock may have planned this. All he does is squirt some liquid onto his fingers and warm it for a few seconds, before making Sherlock get up on all fours as he kneels on the mattress behind him and teases open Sherlock’s arsehole with one finger.

                John’s had anal sex before, so he knows how this is done. He’s never had a participant quite this eager, before, though, and he’s surprised at how little work it is to get Sherlock ready. Pretty soon he’s got three fingers in and Sherlock is squirming and making those goddamn sounds, and John can’t wait any longer. He pulls out the fingers and slips on a condom and lines up his cock and asks, “You want me?”

                “Yes,” Sherlock breathes.

                “Tell me,” John says. There’s suddenly something twisting in his chest. “I want to hear it.”

                “I want you,” Sherlock says to him, and rocks backwards so that the tip of John’s prick rubs on the opening. “John. I want you.” The thing in John’s chest twists tighter, and he grits his teeth and pushes solidly inside.

                John’s thrusts are indelicate, he doesn’t even wait for Sherlock to get used to the sensation. He digs the pads of his fingers into Sherlock’s hips and fucks him. He fucks him and fucks him, grimacing and sweating, and Sherlock is shaking under his hands, and moaning, “Yes, yes, please, John, John, _John_.”

                “Yes,” says John. “Yes, I’m fucking you. I’m fucking you, Sherlock.” He feels the thing coil farther down, wringing out his insides all the way from his throat to his groin. “God, I’m fucking you.”

                When John comes, it’s blinding. He can’t see anything for a few seconds, just black first and then white, and he knows it’s because he’s shut his eyes so very tight. It’s blinding and it’s enveloping his entire body with spasms of pleasure, and he shudders and yells out something incoherent. He doesn’t even notice until afterward that Sherlock has come too, all over the bed, that he’d leaned down with his shoulders on the mattress and reached one hand back to pump himself to climax. John finishes coming and pulls out and collapses next to him, his eyes still closed and breathing so heavily that his spit is escaping in strings from his mouth. He finally opens his eyes and there are Sherlock’s grey ones, heavily-lidded and watching him, while he tries to catch his breath, too.

                “Consider me,” John pants, “proven wrong.”

                Sherlock’s open mouth curves into a smile.


	3. A Pavlovian Trigger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a lady next door, doing arpeggios, whilst we are having sex.

                There is a lady next door, doing arpeggios, whilst we are having sex.

                I didn’t even know there was a lady living next door. I don’t want to admit it, though. Mrs. Hudson has probably mentioned it at some point, or perhaps even John, and I don’t want him to know I haven’t been listening. I’m supposed to listen to people. Shows I care, or something.

                “I’ve never fucked to the opera, before,” says John, with a wicked grin.

                Her voice isn’t half bad. A little flat on some notes, and her vibrato could use some work. There is a piano playing, too, or a keyboard probably, because it’s not booming enough for a piano. “I can’t focus,” I say, grumpily.

                John smirks and shimmies down my torso. He folds down the front of my trousers and pants until my erection pokes out. “Then I guess we’ll just have to drown her out,” he says, his eyes glittering devilishly.

                He proceeds to suck me so well that I start to yelp. The lady next door has moved on to actual songs, now, and I find myself yelping in time to the music. I recognize it: “I Could Have Danced All Night” from _My Fair Lady_. Unfortunately, the yelping is not drowning it out, but I am long past the point of caring. In fact, this is probably going to become a Pavlovian trigger. Whenever that damn lady starts singing, I’m going to pop one thinking about John’s expert fellatio.

                John giggles around my cock, and I wonder (not for the first time) if he knows what I’m thinking. He pulls his head up. “What the passersby must think,” he says, pretending to be scandalized.

                I’m not very happy at this interruption. I spring up from the couch and tackle him on his back instead. He makes a little “ _oof_ ” sound with his mouth in an “O” and his eyes go wide with surprise. “Open up,” I say, arranging my knees on either side of his head.

                John gets that glazed look and goes all obedient underneath me, the way he always does when I decide to take control. I don’t do it very often, as (I’m loathe to admit) I am quite self-conscious during sex. It only happens on the rare occasion, such as this, that he’s got me so hot I no longer care. I brace myself on the arm of the couch with one hand and guide my cock into his mouth with the other.

                The lady is doing the second verse. She’s quite warmed up and is really starting to give it some flourish. I can’t help but think of it as a metaphor, as I thrust on top of John’s face.

                John takes it in, deep. He’s starting to make little choking sounds, which I love. His eyes are watering, and he’s looking up at me, watching for my reaction. He likes to watch my face. He says it’s like the whole world coming apart at the seams. He grunts around me, and slides his hand between my cheeks. Desire pools hot in my abdomen as he ghosts a finger over my arsehole. There’s no lube though so he won’t go inside, he just strokes and presses into the space between it and my bollocks.

                The desire shoots all the way up through my chest. The couch is beginning to creak, we’re really bouncing, now. The lady’s voice goes up high, and then higher, and higher. She hits the highest note and I come, just for the cliché of it. I arch my back and grip the couch and groan with my eyes shut tight.

                I can’t move for a moment. There’s silence next door and only panting in here. But then the keyboard begins to play again, and I gradually slide off of John. He sits up, and wipes his mouth, and opens his jaw to pop it back right.

                “My turn,” he says, and grins again.


	4. Live Dangerously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our lives were about to get a little more dangerous.

                “And then, to cover her blunder, she took him to bed!” I said excitedly, elated with having just made the first crack in the case.

                John grinned at me. Unfortunately enough, I knew what that grin meant, in that moment, in that context. I groaned internally, waiting for it.

                “ _I’d_ like to take _you_ to bed,” he said, and smirked like he’d just made the cleverest sexual segue on the planet.

                “Now?” I whined. “I’m roughly two brilliant epiphanies away from solving this case, and you want to do it _now_?”

                John’s grin showed all his teeth. He stepped towards me and slid his arms around my waist. “Yes, now.”

                I let my head fall back in resigned protest, and sighed heavily, staring at the ceiling.

                “If you didn’t want to turn me on,” John said, using the opportunity to kiss his way down my throat, “you shouldn’t have been so brilliant.” He slid his hand up to push my shirt out of the way, and put his lips on my collar bone. “It’s your own bloody fault, you know.”

                “I can’t help it,” I pouted. “If I could, I would.”

                John chuckled into my skin. “Sure, you would.”

                It was no use. John believed whatever he wanted to believe, regardless of what I told him—or what anyone at all told him, for that matter. It used to be one of his more endearing qualities, back before he became my sexual partner. “Boyfriend,” was what he asked me to call it, at the beginning, when he vocalized all of the things he wanted me to do so that we could be a “normal” couple. Things like calling each other “boyfriends.” And kissing. And holding hands. “Normal couples hold hands, Sherlock,” he told me, one time when we were watching telly. 

                “Normal?” I echoed, my arms crossed at the other end of the sofa. “Have you met me?”

                John’s jaw got all steely. “It’s not like we’re at a crime scene, or something. Christ, we’re sitting on the couch. At home. Alone. You can’t sodding hold my hand? Am I that repulsive to you?” He was very good at guilting me. He’d got even better at it than usual since we’d started up together.

                “No,” I said, dejectedly.

                “Then why won’t you?”

                The problem was, I didn’t exactly know. Being “with” John was something I wanted, but it turned out that he and I had very different definitions of what that meant. Well, that’s not quite true. In the beginning it meant the same thing—the beginning, when we’d got trapped in that basement with the water coming in through all the windows and we thought we were going to die. The beginning, when being “with” John meant his hot mouth on mine and our fists full of the back of each other’s jackets. It was desperate and close, a desire to live, to experience life in a primal way that I usually abhorred. It was a revelation, no, a breakthrough. I was emotional. I was sexual. I was human.

                I thought things would be different after that, and so did he. There, so close to death, I told him I had wanted him with me, not _her_. That I’d always wanted it. That there wasn’t anything to lose now, and so I had to tell him. Words poured out of me in a way they’d never done before, which was really saying something, knowing how often and spectacularly I monologued.

                So when we actually made it out of that flooding room alive, and got back to London, and John followed close behind me up the stairs of 221B and shoved me against the door to kiss me again, I didn’t understand why I was repulsed. Why his slimy tongue in my mouth, pushing his four-hour old coffee breath and the taste of his unflossed teeth between my lips, made me want to gag instead of suck it down the way I might have (and did) when I thought we were about to die. Why I was back to my old self, instead of the new one.

                But that’s what happened; I no longer had an interest in the physicality of a romantic relationship. I wanted John to be with me, certainly. To live with me in the flat, eat his meals with me, solve crimes and blog and read the paper and watch telly. I wanted him to do those things with me, and not anyone else, until the day we died. But kissing? Hugging? Holding hands? Sex? The thought of those brought a sour taste to my mouth, one that I had to swallow to keep down.

                I swallowed now, with John’s lips against my throat, and he let out a heavy breath in response, tightening his one handed grip around the small of my back and pressing the length of his hardening prick against my thigh.

                I weighed my options. I could tell him the truth, that I “wasn’t in the mood,” and watch his fragile confidence crumble behind his polite and stolid mask. Or, alternatively, I could put up with it for a short time and then he would be happy and satisfied leave me alone for another few days.

                I chose the latter. It was easier to give him what he wanted than to explain why I didn’t want it too.

                I righted my head and kissed him with my mouth open and my head tilted sideways, the way I knew he liked. I slid my hand down his belly and over the front of his trousers, squeezing his erection. He groaned softly and licked my tongue with his. He’d had leftover curry for lunch—not a pleasing second-hand flavor. I pulled back to get away from it and dropped down to my knees, unbuttoning his flies as I went. I’d discovered that fellatio was the easiest way to please him without showing how unaroused I was. It was quick, and relatively painless, and there was little mess to clean afterward. And I could tell him I’d orgasmed in my trousers (eager virgin, and all that) so that he wouldn’t try to reciprocate. I’d done this the last three times he’d propositioned me, and it had worked flawlessly.

                However, John seemed to have other plans for this afternoon. “Hey,” he said softly, putting his hand over mine to still it. “Why don’t we try something else today, hm?” He smiled down at me, his eyes already glazed with lust.

                For a man who insisted he wasn’t gay for so very long, John Watson had absolutely zero problem with gay sex. The first time we did anything was that day after the flood, kissing and frotting against the poor door, and John was so far gone so fast that just rubbing him through his trousers got him off. Then there was me, praising every deity out there that the uncomfortable amount of friction created by John’s palm on _my_ trousers had induced a partial erection—the way perhaps a bite of peanut butter might induce anaphylactic shock in one allergic to peanuts—so that as I stroked him to completion I could mimic his sounds and shudders and pretend that I’d got off as well.

                I liked pleasing him, I did. I liked the way he responded when I touched him, or made a sound, or said something explicit. The first time I put my mouth on the head of his cock, he let out a whine so unabashed that I couldn’t help grinning with pride around him. If John was pleased, that meant I was proficient; if he was blown away (so to speak), that meant I was stellar. And if I was stellar, in every facet of our life together, he would never want to leave.

                Yes, I know. It was insecure, to think that he would leave. But who could blame me? I was rubbish at relationships, and he’d only ever wanted women in the past. It was a recipe for disaster, and we’d constantly tread thin ice if I were to refuse him sex. Consider the facts: he’d first abandoned me to marry his sexual partner. Then, he’d left his life with _her_ when he’d thought that _I’d_ be his sexual partner, instead. It was the one thing keeping him here, now. So I had to keep pretending, and he could never find out.

                I’d known the frotting and mutual masturbation through our trousers and one sided blow-jobs couldn’t last forever. I was dreading the day that he’d ask to see me nude, because even if I could manage an erection, I wouldn’t be able to get off—and I wouldn’t be able to fake it, exposed in that way.

                I swallowed again, and attempted to smile back. “What did you have in mind?”

                John tucked his forefinger under my chin and tugged, silently asking me to stand. I did so, and he kept his hand where it was. He brushed my lips with his thumb, and stared at them before leaning in for another kiss. My heart beat wildly with anticipation. _This is it_ , I thought. _He’s going to ask you to take off your clothes._

                “I want to see you,” he whispered. I knew the “naked” was implied, and I resisted the urge to mutter “I told you so” to myself. It wasn’t exactly satisfying in this situation.

                “Alright,” I said, instead.

                John took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom. He sat down on the mattress and pulled me towards him, opening his legs and settling me between them. The sour taste was worse than ever, and my stomach roiled with acidity. I realized I was trembling. So, at the same time, did John.

                He looked up and studied me. I suddenly felt more naked than I probably would have with all my clothes off. “We don’t have to do this if you’re not ready,” he told me, at last.

                I was stunned. Yes! Brilliant! _John, you’re a genius._ Why hadn’t I thought of that? The timid virgin. It was absolutely perfect. “I don’t want to disappoint you,” I said, feigning guilt.

                “Oh, Sherlock,” said John, and to my surprise, he laughed. “You could never disappoint me.” He stood up and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

                “That’s certainly not true,” I said, my body flooding with immense relief. I’d lived to have sex another day. “What about that time I didn’t come to your birthday dinner?”

                John just walked away, laughing again.

***

                “Are you attracted to me?”

                The question had come out of nowhere, for we’d been talking about a case, not about _us_. We were even situated on opposite sides of the flat; I was at my microscope, John was sitting in _my_ chair by the hearth (a thing he’d started to do, mysteriously, when he’d moved back in). He was going through his notes from the crime scene visit, when he abruptly put down his pen and asked the question.

                I supposed four months of “shy virgin” was too many, and John had started to become suspicious. Why he’d chosen this moment in time to bring it up, though, I didn’t know. He acted so irrationally, sometimes. I looked up from my microscope and blinked at him. “Of course I am.”

                “Because I’ve been waiting for you to initiate... something,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard me, “for the last one hundred and seventeen days.” John was annoyingly precise when he wanted to be.

                “Has it been that long?” I asked, deflecting. “I suppose I’ve just been so engrossed in this case.”

                His eyes darkened. “We’ve gone through three cases in that time!”

                “John.” I pushed back from the table and folded my hands in front of my chin. “You know how I am. When I’m working, I’m very single-minded. There’s no room for distraction when there’s a crime to solve.”

                “And when you’re _not_ working, your mind goes everywhere but me.”

                I took a deep breath. “That’s not true.”

                “It is, Sherlock.” John closed his notebook and uncrossed his legs. “Last week we didn’t have a case, and you were running five different experiments _and_ researching how to smuggle an entire flock of bats into Mycroft’s flat, and not once did you try anything with me!”

                “He hates bats,” I said, annoyed because I’d already explained this once. “And it’s not a ‘flock’, it’s a _colony_ —“

                “Sherlock,” John interrupted. His voice was suddenly lower, which was not a good sign.

                I sighed. “Of course I’m attracted to you,” I repeated. I was. Or I had been. That one time. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. “I’m just...” I sought for the right words to pacify him. I knew I couldn’t avoid the topic forever, but maybe just a bit longer... “Afraid,” I finished.

                John frowned. “Afraid of what?”

                “That I won’t... be any good at it.” I looked down, as if I were ashamed.

                “Sherlock,” John was exasperated. “Of course you’ll be good at it. You’re good at everything!”

                “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I countered, looking up again. “You expect me to be a genius all the time, including in the bedroom. What if I’m not?”

                John snorted. “Then I’ll tell all the papers and shag twenty blokes who are.”

                I twisted my lips and didn’t reply. He sighed and stood, making his way over to where I sat on my stool. I looked back down at the microscope, fiddling with the slides.

                He leaned his elbows on the table. “Look at me, Sherlock.” I did, reluctantly. He gave me that look, the one that said _“I can’t believe I’m about to explain something so simple to the smartest man in the world.”_ “There’s no way your lack of experience at sex could make me leave. For God’s sake, I’m just as new as you are at this, in some ways. And actually,” he looked upward, thinking. “I’m sort of glad you’re a virgin. That way you won’t know how terrible _I_ am at this.”

                “That’s preposterous,” I interjected. “You could never be terrible.”

                John’s eyes twinkled. “Exactly.”

                I didn’t get it, but I wasn’t about to ask him to explain. “I’ll be ready, eventually. I promise.” I hoped. “I just... need some time.”

                John studied me for a long moment. “I just want to make sure you still want this.”

                Perhaps it was his constant nagging, but suddenly, I knew what I needed to do. I reached down and squeezed his nearest hand in my own. “I do,” I said, with as much genuine feeling as I could muster.

                John looked down at our hands, and I caught a new expression on his face that I’d never seen before. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were glistening. “Then take all the time you need.”

***

                In the weeks that followed, I’d managed to find the courage for two encounters—both ended in blowjobs, but still. I knew that waiting for me to want sex wasn’t going to happen overnight (if ever), so I had to give him something in the meantime. John didn’t ask me if I wanted him to reciprocate, and I didn’t tell him if I got off or not. But I deduced, after it was done and I brushed my teeth and went back to whatever I’d been doing before, that he was disappointed. It was incredibly frustrating; I was clearly satisfying his bodily need to have sex, and his emotional need to have a companion in life, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted more from me, and I didn’t know how to give it to him.

                That was, until the night we’d chased after the axe murder.

                Yes, he was legitimately an axe murderer. Throwing axes, to be exact, a skill which he was very, very good at. He liked to tie up his victims and practice his aim by embedding an axe in the tree next to crucial body parts while they watched their lives flash before their eyes with every throw. And then he would get bored, and make a direct hit.

                We caught him in an apple orchard just outside of the city, and spent the better part of twenty minutes chasing him and dodging his throws—two of which nearly decapitated me. John finally got him in the back of the leg with a shot from his gun, snapping his hamstring and causing him to shriek in pain while falling to the ground. John stood over him with the gun pointed between his eyes and proceeded to make calm but chilling threats about what he felt like doing to people who threw sharp objects at his “boyfriend.” He was sweating on his forehead and next to his ears so that the hair there was dark and damp, and his breath was coming out in bursts of fog, and his hand was perfectly steady as he spoke and cocked his gun in the man’s face like it was nothing. Scotland Yard showed up directly after and we went home in a taxi, laughing and chattering breathlessly.

                At some point during the ride, I realized I wanted him.

                I wanted his mouth on mine and our limbs tangled together. I wanted to feel his pulse pounding in his neck with my lips, to experience the heat of his body next to my own, to hear the sounds he made when he was aroused and climaxing. We barely made it inside the front door before I attacked him. I didn’t even bother with kissing, I just shoved him into the wall and went straight for his belt. It was exhilarating and exciting and relieving, relieving most of all, that those feelings I’d had that first time had come back. That they could.

                I must have not made my intentions clear, however, because John made a sort of squawking sound and wriggled out of my grasp. “What are you doing?” he asked, and stared at me with large eyes.

                “Trying to get off with you,” I answered, too aroused to play coy. “Problem?”

                John’s mouth fell open, gaping. “ _God_ no,” he finally choked, and pounced on me with a matching ferocity.

                We were already halfway undressed by the time we made it up to the flat. I felt drunk with the feeling, everything was bright and sharp and real. I was alive, and he was alive, after we’d nearly died, again tonight. “Jesus,” John said, as I slammed the door behind me and shoved him toward the nearest flat surface—which happened to be our kitchen table. I thrust a leg between his thighs to open them, leaning in and rolling our hips together. I grabbed the hair on the back of his head and turned his mouth upward to my own. It tasted like sweat, and like gunsmoke. I didn’t even think to deduce what he’d eaten for dinner. “Jesus God,” John swore again, his breath erratic. I undid his trousers, and then my own, pushing them down, with my pants, so that they scrunched around my knees. John scrambled off the table to do the same. I was so hard, desperately needed some friction, so I moved forward and reached for the back of John’s arse and pulled his hips into mine so that our cocks were slotted next to each other. We stilled there, for a second, both of us breathing heavily. John’s eyes were dark and wide and he gasped, “God, Sherlock. You.”

                I braced my free arm on the table below and rutted against him, experimentally. A spark of electric desire jolted through my groin and into my stomach, and I shuddered and rutted again. John made a strangled noise in front of me. There wasn’t really a rhythm to what we were doing, but it was more than enough, with John’s cock sliding next to mine, with the sounds he made and the way he gripped my hips so hard that I had bruises the next day. The way he said my name, “Sherlock,” interspersed with “God,” and “Jesus Christ,” like they were synonymous.

                “This is you,” he said, at one point, when he stopped looking at our cocks and looked at my face, instead. “Sherlock. It’s you.” I stared back at him, my body trembling with lust and adrenaline and God only knew what else. John reached a hand around the back of my neck and clasped it, like a lifeline. “It’s you and me,” he whispered.

                It was then, the moment I orgasmed, that I had the epiphany; my libido was only awakened by proximity to death.

                The first time, we thought we were going to drown. The second, we’d almost got our heads chopped off by an axe murderer. Ironically, near death experiences made me feel more alive than ever—alive, and wanting to experience everything that goes with it. Including sex.

                We slid to the floor, tangled up together, sweating and sticky and half conscious with the waves of our pleasure subsiding into a calming bliss. John looked into my eyes, his half lidded, and he brushed the hair off my forehead, smiling softly. And I knew that if I could give this to him, this moment, over and over again, he would never want to leave.

                And if near-death experiences were what it took... well. Our lives were about to get a little more dangerous.

 


	5. Letting Go

                “John,” said Sherlock, not looking at him. He looked down instead, at the length in John’s trousers, and his own.

                “Let me,” John whispered. “It’s okay, let me.” He reached down and smoothed his hand over Sherlock, and Sherlock closed his eyes. “Shhh,” said John, stroking him. “I’ve got you.”

                “John,” Sherlock said again, and canted his hips into the touch.

                “Yes,” hissed John. “Yes, Sherlock. Just like that. Yeah. It’s good, isn’t it, it’s so good.” He was breathing hard, his inhales and exhales echoing loudly in space between them. He unzipped Sherlock’s flies and buried his hand inside Sherlock’s pants.

                “I—” Sherlock began.

                “I know. I know. Just relax. Just let me, please.” Sherlock’s head was tilted back, against the wall. His neck stretched long and white in the darkness. “God, you’re gorgeous. Jesus God. Sherlock.”

                Sherlock’s face was a mess of concentrated lines. A pleasant flush had crept up from his chest to his pale cheeks, rosy red. John had always thought he looked like a marble statue, rigid and white, but he didn’t, now. Not now. John changed his grip and used his thumb to slide over the ridge with every upstroke.

                Sherlock made a noise he’d never heard before, high pitched and needy. “I can’t,” he choked, and opened his eyes.

                “Yes you can. Just let go.”

                He shook his head.

                “You can. Sherlock. Look at me.” Sherlock did, his pale eyes nearly overcome by his pupils. “It’s just me, okay. It’s just you and me, and I want this, God, I want you to feel this. I want you to feel so good. It’ll be so good. I promise.”

                “John—“

                “I won’t let you fall apart. I won’t. I promise, you can feel good right now, and I won’t let it hurt you.” John raised his other hand and slid it back to cup Sherlock’s jaw. Sherlock turned and pressed his panting mouth into the palm. His face began to relax. The tension in his shoulders eased. “That’s it. Yes, that’s it. Just relax. You don’t have to do anything.” His head thumped on the wall, and he mouthed John’s name against his skin. “That’s right. It’s me. It’s just me, no one else. Just me and you.” Suddenly Sherlock’s hips twitched, and he let out a cry. The sound was desperate and broken. John felt him come, hot and wet in his fist, and he made quick firm strokes to ease him through it.

                When it was over, John stayed pressed against him on the wall until his breathing slowed to a semi-regular pace. He felt Sherlock release the fabric of his shirtsleeves, where he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding on. He looked up, and Sherlock’s eyes were still closed very tightly. “You alright?” he asked, stroking his cheek.

                “No,” said Sherlock, still not looking at him. “No, I don’t think I am.”


End file.
